I love to see people dream.  To use their imagination.  To create things that don’t yet exist.  To watch someone rise to their passion and purpose is exhilarating, and to play even a small role in releasing that potential is intoxicating.

But what if I’m drawing that stream out of a polluted well?

One of the dangers I personally face as a spiritual leader is creating and communicating via isogesis. Now there’s a fun theological word.  Isogesis refers to starting with a specific belief, and then searching (typically Scripture) for evidence to support my already pre-determined supposition.

This can be a dangerous way to approach God because it starts with me and then makes a vain attempt to bring Him into the equation.

A lot of us dream that way, too.  And as you can see from this passage of Scripture, I can be a dangerous origin.

“What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it.  And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.” (James 4:1-3 NLT)

I’m messed up. And while the things that naturally reside inside of me are undoubtedly part of my God-design, they’re also polluted with misguided motivation and selfish agendas.  With sin.  My dreams need redemption right along with the rest of me.

Jesus calls us to repentance, to realignment with Him. And not just as a one-time event, but a daily surrender.  Then my imagination begins to emerge from a healthy well.  My dreams naturally become sourced by God and I stop desperately seeking a “blessing” for things that originated with me.

So what about you?  Do you dreams emerge from The Source, or are you “isogeting?” Starting with you and desperately hoping God will come along for the ride?

Tough one for me.  But that’s the problem with dreaming.

My friend Davy has really impressed me over the years. When I first met him, I knew him as a stellar, young guitarist who joined the music team I was leading.  A few months later, I found out he was an absolutely fabulous singer (think Adam Lambert’s range without all the, well…disturbing stuff).

About a year into our friendship, I learned he was into graphic design.  I thought, “awe that’s nice, this kid likes to draw.“  Then a few months later he took up photography (like, from scratch…never done it before).  I was impressed.

But the world was going the way of the internet (not sure if you heard that or not), and he didn’t really know how to do web programming or development.  Until he did.  Taught himself. Did this kid ever stop?

Watching Davy helped me realize something important.  He isn’t pencil sketcher.  A painter.  A computer designer.  He doesn’t just take pictures or write web code.  He is an artist.  And he’s willing to use whatever medium presents itself to bring to life what was is really inside of him.

I want to be the same way.  But how many of us get caught up in the expression of who we are instead of, well, who we actually, really are?

A lot of people have asked me if I miss doing music full-time.  In some ways I definitely do.  Music has been a life-long passion, and the piano a technical pursuit since I was just four years old.  I was just beginning to see my dreams of songwriting and record production come to life when we stepped away to start City Community Church.  Sounds crazy.  But I’ve tried hard to define myself by what’s inside of me, not by the way it comes out.

I am a follower of Jesus Christ, and my purpose is to bring God’s Kingdom alive in the world. Today that expresses itself, not through music, but in co-leading a brand new community of believers.  Through speaking and teaching.  By writing and blogging.  Through sitting across a table from real people as they process life, what it means to genuinely encounter Jesus, and if they really buy into all that or not.

I’m not a musician or songwriter, a teacher, a writer, a pastor. That’s just what I do.  And hopefully I can effectively use those expressions to accurately bring the redemption of Christ to life in this broken world.  I want to constantly work on who I am, and who God is becoming in me. The outflow always starts from there.

What’s driving your expression? Is there any substance behind what others see?  Are you nurturing what lies under the surface?  What’s at the source?  Are you an “artist” or just a “painter?”  What defines you?

I’m a practical idealist.  A pragmatic dreamer.  It’s a blessing and a plague.  I’m full of passionate dreams, world-changing imagination, big vision – all combined with a sobering (and sometimes paralyzing) inoculation of reality.  Some days it feels like schizophrenia.

I remember the moment like it was yesterday.  I was a 2nd year music major at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, laying in the upper bunk of my dorm room in Herron Hall, staring at the textured ceiling early one morning.  I was chasing my dream, to be in the Nashville music scene, and had the educational trajectory to prove it.  Only problem: my realism gene was kicking in.

So many of my older friends were graduating (with $50k+ in debt mind you) from this prestigious school that had successfully populated so much of the Nashville music industry.  And their highly respected diplomas were leading them to wait tables at the local Chili’s.  Big dreams (and big debt) wrapped in a soaking wet blanket of real life.

Heck, I didn’t need to spend $50k to wait tables.  I could do that for free.  So I left Nashville and my dreams of music biz stardom and got a degree in the absolutely most practical thing I could think of: accounting (yeah…I know).  Reality swallowed and digested my ambition.

So what’s the right answer?  Live as a pragmatic realist, squashing every dose of passion with the hammer of responsibility? My grandfather did that.  Forty years in a Chicago steel mill, consistent schedule, regular paycheck, good pension.  Hard work, but safe.  Consistent.  Responsible.  I often wonder what untapped vision he surrendered to the compelling call of responsible realism. What dreams were buried with him?

What I see in my generation is quite the opposite, but maybe even more disturbing.  Lots of dreams.  Lots of visions (usually of grandeur).  Lots of imagination.  Countless choices.  Zero realism.  And so influence goes unused and imagination stays stored in a little locked cupboard full of immobilized idealism.

The expressions of these two generational perspectives may look completely different, but the symptom is the same: control.

Pragmatists choose predictability over possibility.  Idealists choose imagination over action.  Practicality eliminates the possibility of failure.  But so does just dreaming.  In both cases, we keep control of our lives, our efforts, our destinies. We call the shots.  We make the rules.  We eliminate the risk.

We write our story.

And while we continue to furiously scribble with our ink-less pen, the Creator of the Universe patiently waits for us to simply surrender ourselves to His beautiful, dream-filled, action-packed narrative.

Risky.  Unpredictable.  Costly.  But very real.

“If people can’t see what God is doing they stumble all over themselves; but when they attend to what He reveals they are most blessed.” -Prov. 29:18

If I’m totally honest (and I try to be most of the time…really, I do), I spend a big chunk of my time pursuing what I naturally see inside this head of mine. I can’t help it.  The vision I have for my future has been shaped by my parents, my socio-economic upbringing, my sub-culture, the friends I grew up with, my experiences, the voices I’ve listened to.  My expectations and assumptions for life are there, under the surface, triggering my impulses and shaping my decisions, even when I’m completely oblivious to their power. That’s not wrong.  It’s human.

But if I continue down that road of complete honesty (because apparently all my other posts are full of deception?), I spend a lot of time doing my own thing. I allow my instincts and culture to shape my life’s direction, and then invite God along for the ride.  I’m really good at it.  I can even spiritually spin it, use grandiose God-terminology, Scripture even, to make myself (and those around me) think I’m after God’s vision and not my own.  (Sometimes I even believe my own stories).

And that makes me tired. I get worn out trying to manufacture energy, create growth, draw attention, maintain what I have.  My life.  My vision.  My game plan.  Mine.

I think there are a lot of tired people in this world. Tired from chasing the American dream, hiding consumerism in words like “responsibility,” living under our culture’s expectations and obligations, religious duty, cloaking self-absorption in God-language and spiritual vernacular.

What would happen if we learned to stop and listen? To absorb?  To allow ourselves to truly be transformed by the values and desires of God’s Kingdom?  To “attend to what He reveals?” What if we learned to align ourselves with what God was already doing?

What if we learned to ask, and then really listened and responded to what God revealed about:

• Our families?
• Our marriages?
• The way we spend our money?
• Where we live?
• Our most important relationships?
• His heart for justice?
• His plan for our city?

Something is already formulating these visions. Getting a glimpse of what God is already doing will not happen naturally.  We have to be proactive in pursuing, uncovering, listening, surrendering…and then we flat out have to find the guts to respond. Most of the big decisions we make in life aren’t complicated, they’re just very costly.  A lot of times, I’m just not willing to pay the price (yeah, I admit it).

What would happen if we all learned to “attend to what He reveals?“  What if we got in line with what He is already doing?  Are you willing to pay the price?  Yeah, I’m not always sure I am either.

“Do good and you’ll be rewarded for it.”
-Proverbs 28:10 (MSG)

I love verses like this. I could camp-out here (if I didn’t hate camping).  Stay for awhile.  Maybe put down some roots.  That’s good stuff.  I like rewards.  Rewards are good.  Right?

There I go assuming again…

As I pondered this verse over the past few days, a sobering question arose.  Rewards are good for me, but who says that rewards always feel good? Am I making some bad assumptions:

Reward = comfort
Reward = notoriety
Reward = riches
Reward = happiness
Reward = my desired outcome

Woohoo!  Bring it on God!  I’m ready for my reward!

But what if God’s greatest reward is my crushing? What if it’s the systematic disassembling of everything I ever thought I wanted?  The loss of my dream so that His dreams can come alive in me?  What if that reward is a closeness to God that can only be obtained by the complete dismantling of everything I am?  What if that reward is the putting to death of all my self-driven motivation? What if it comes full of pain, questions, uncertainty, and gut-wrenching, sleepless nights?

“Well, uh…you can keep that reward God.  Not interested.  I’m happy to leave that one on the table.  Save that one for someone else.  Yeah, in fact I know exactly who you can give that one to.  Want a name?  I’ve got it right here in my iPhone...gimme just a second…”

God’s greatest reward is His presence, His love, His deep and ever-pursuing passion to make right everything in me that I can’t make right on my own.  And all it takes to obtain that reward is…

…all of me.

My reward is His life, but the pathway to get there costs me everything.  Some reward?

Yeah, it is.

There’s always an underlying motivation driving the birth of something new.  A felt need, a discontent, frustration, passion…a desire to be different, to add something new to the conversation.  There are lots of churches out there trying to be different, trying to grasp the direction of the culture and speak to it, us included.  So over the last decade or so we’ve seen a wide-spread shift to implement expressive changes like contemporary music, casual dress, social networking, you name it.  We could easily compile a very long list.

And much of what we do at City Community Church would be reflected in that list:  our musicians are cutting edge, we’re all over Twitter and Facebook, and if I needed a tie for some unexplainable, cruel and heinous reason, I’d probably have to make a trip to Goodwill to pick one up (I’m firmly convinced neckties are a result of the fallout of original sin).

But those things are window dressing.  We can very easily fall victim to changing the outward expression without really dealing with the core of our motivations and worldview.  That’s the hard painful work most of us choose to avoid.

So what drives City Community Church?  What’s our motivation?  Why did we start this grand experiment?  I’ll at least share our hope:  It’s in how we want to see people.

Let me tell you a dirty little secret.  I believe in Jesus, I’m creative, I’m passionate, I’m motivated…and I’m innately and hopelessly selfish (and so are you…sorry).  It would be so easy for my buddy Nathan and I to leverage our influence and entrepreneurial capacity to turn CityCom into a pathway to fulfilling our own personal dreams, and to simply see the people around us as commodities in that pursuit.  If I’m being completely honest (shhhh…come real close…I have to whisper) a lot of churches do exist simply to fulfill their own organizational agendas or those of their leader.  No one would admit it, but it’s true.  It’s human nature, it can sneak in subtly, and we all have to guard against it.

So as we launch City Community Church, our deepest desire is to unearth the unbelievable, untapped, uncultivated God-imparted possibilities that reside inside of everyday individuals.  We want to be curators of people potential.  And not just so we have musicians to staff Sunday services, workers for the children’s ministries, and ushers to collect the offering.  It’s not that those things aren’t valid (or needed), they’re just not our ultimate definition of success.  We don’t just want to mobilize your Sunday, we want to empower your Monday.

So don’t just wait for us.  Our job is to help you uncover your God-birthed vision, not design, create and implement one for you.  Look for us to push, prod, inspire, challenge, and flat out irritate you into becoming all that God created you to be, in the context of the daily life He’s called you to live.  For the record, that starts with Jesus.

Now you know.  Now we’re accountable.  Let’s get to it.

You can see a lot in someone’s eyes.  Joy, fear, peace, happiness, hunger, pain.  Even after six weeks, I’m still processing my experiences from La Ceiba, Honduras…mostly when I look into the eyes of my own children.

The eyes on the left belong to my 7 year old daughter Anna.  I’ve met very few girls as care free and in love with life as this little one.  She spends her summer days playing with dolls, dressing up like a princess, riding her new purple bike, and playing with her friends.  She’s getting a passion for fashion, so it’s not out of the ordinary to see her in five different outfits on any given day.  And in the midst of all her carefree summer daydreaming, when Anna looks into the future the possibilities are endless.  Actually, it’s involuntary.  She doesn’t even question it, because she innately knows her future is full of limitless potential if she’s willing to pursue it.  She has the creativity, the relationships, and the culture around her to make it happen.  You can see it in her eyes.

The eyes on the right belong to Lourdess, a 7 year old girl we met in La Ceiba.  She lives in a square, wooden-box of a house with cardboard for “drywall,” about the size of our family room, with her mom and dad (a rare blessing in this community) and a plethora of brothers and sisters.  Dad is constantly struggling to find work in this depressed economy, but unlike so many other fathers from the neighborhood, has chosen (at least for now) not to leave his family for work in the USA.  Lourdess loves to play, too.  She had a doll, some crayons (she even gave us a picture she had drawn), and an old worn-out Disney princess dress.  The same dress hangs in my Anna’s closet here in Indy.

But as I wrote from Honduras, the greatest struggle for me is not the lack of money or even the awful living conditions.  It was in the eyes.  The hope, the encouragement, the possibilities that impulsively fill the gaze of my little Anna aren’t even in the lexicon for Lourdess.  In fact, when we asked many of these young children about their “sueños” (or dreams of the future), they required further explanation.  Not only did they have no vision for the future, they had no context in which to even understand the question.

Honestly, I don’t know what to do with all this.  Guilt is not a valid motivator, and God doesn’t use condemnation to push us in His direction.  But I do know we all need to embrace the journey, to ask God what He wants from us.  He never holds us accountable for what we don’t have, but He has high expectations for us to properly use what we do. That’s why we’re partnering with organizations like Mission of Mercy to try and do what we can to make a dent into the hopelessness we encountered in Honduras.

How do we fill both sets of eyes with the same limitless hope?  Not hope for the American way of life which is found in a temporary, man-made culture; but the Hope of the Creator of life, the limitless God-possibilities woven into our very being and intended for eternity.  The truth is, you don’t have to go to Honduras to find the injustice of hopelessness.  Just look into the eyes all around you.  Time for God’s people to right that wrong.

Poverty sucks.  It didn’t take me too long to determine that.  Bet you don’t disagree either, even if you’ve never touched it, tasted it, or smelled it for yourself.  As I walked the streets of Las Delicious, a small shanty-town community in La Ceiba, Honduras, the reality of what I knew existed was literally all around me.  It’s almost as if my brain instinctively compartmentalized, packaging up the things it could process and eliminating the pieces it didn’t know what to do with.  No one should live like this…dirt floors, cardboard box walls, scraping for food, families of six all sleeping in a room smaller than my master bedroom closet.  But it wasn’t the lack of money or resources that bothered me most.

Hope had left the building.  There was none.  Nowhere to be seen.  When these little kids…kids with names and faces and eyes I could stare deeply into…when they look into their future, they see nothing.  Nothing.  There is no vision of better circumstances, of greater opportunity.  There’s no encouragement to discover the fullness of the “Imago Deo,” or image of God that is imprinted into their very being.  Creativity is smothered by lack of vision, and the untapped creative potential in these little faces was the hardest thing for me to digest.  They live in the slums, they are the slums, and they will always be the slums.  That is a recipe for hopelessness.  And that, my friends, is the worst of injustices.

How do we make that right?  I guess that’s the million dollar question.  I think it starts somewhere inside of me, with the realization that I actually have something of value to offer.  Money?  Sure.  Resources are imperative to solving this crisis.  But perhaps the single greatest thing we can offer another human being is hope.  That obviously starts with Jesus Christ.  But encapsulated in that is an opportunity and responsibility for me to help someone else look into their future and see what God originally intended.  To pull back the weeds, clear a pathway, remove the rubble that keeps them from seeing God’s vision for their lives.  I can do that in Honduras.  And we will.  But I can also do that in the lives of those I encounter every single day.  Will we?

I’m noticing something interesting about the mindset of a builder:  everything is fresh and new, all paths are undiscovered, theories are untested, and risk is easy.  After all…there’s nothing to lose.  Literally.  When I’m working to create something that does not yet exist, risk is not difficult.  Really, what’s the other choice?

But what happens when time has created something worth holding onto?  That’s when we begin to manage, to protect the successes we’ve already achieved, the “assets” that have already been amassed.  Cue red flashing sirens and danger alerts.  When we stop dreaming of God’s future and start managing God’s past blessings, we’re on the doorstep of a catastrophe.

I’m writing this today as much as anything to hold myself accountable.  Human nature, no matter how well-intentioned, naturally reverts to protectionism.  And success may just be the worst culprit.  As we plant City Community Church today, it’s easy to risk.  Five years from now, will that risk be so easy?  Undoubtedly no.  That’s why today the question must be asked:  when current building begins to become future management, what are we going to force ourselves to risk?  God’s purposes are never found in only managing the past.